German authorities criticised over presumed Pride attacker

German law enforcement authorities faced criticism Monday for failing to prevent a deadly vehicle and machete attack near Berlin’s Pride parade, with the far-right AfD demanding tougher action against Islamists. Politicians, security experts and a police union asked why the presumed attacker, Abdul Ballout, 21 — who was shot dead by police on Sunday after approaching them with a bladed weapon — was walking free and not under close surveillance after previous convictions and an attempt to join the so-called Islamic State group. “The danger from this man was underestimated,” Rolf Tophoven of the Institute for Terrorism Research and Security Policy told AFP.

The attacker on Saturday evening ploughed a rented minivan into a crowd before slashing away at people with a machete, killing a Polish woman and wounding 29 others, at the edge of Berlin’s Tiergarten park where a large LGBTQ community event was being held. After a city-wide manhunt, police shot dead Ballout on Sunday evening in an allotment complex in the capital’s western Spandau district. Prosecutors said Ballout, a German citizen with Lebanese roots, had previous convictions for causing bodily harm, extortion and robbery and had attempted to join the IS group in Syria.

The attack comes two months before Berliners elect a new assembly for the city-state, with some polls predicting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could emerge as the biggest party in a crowded field. In an X post, the AfD’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, accused Chancellor Friedrich Merz of insufficient action against “migrant violence” and said her party was “ready to act”. Merz himself said on Monday that it was “too early to say what political conclusions we will draw from this brutal attack, but it is clear that we will have to go beyond just announcements”.

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“We will have to answer the question of how it is that a man with this profile could get close (to the parade) unhindered and commit this sort of attack,” he told a press conference. Ballout had last year travelled to Lebanon in a failed attempt to join the IS group in Syria but was arrested and spent three months in jail in Lebanon before his repatriation.

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